All the Best Stories from Week 1 of the Olympics
We couldn’t just pick one.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent this week waking up early (and staying up late) to binge Peacock’s “Gold Zone,” and watch as much Olympics as possible. A week in, you’re an expert on Team Handball—and have texted your friends to see if you can put a team together to compete in 2028 (we could get a bronze…AT LEAST). You’ve fallen in love with America’s women’s rugby team and have researched whether an NFL team can sign Ilona Maher before training camp. And even if you’ve not gone as deep into all things Olympics as I have, you’ve definitely picked your jaw off the floor after Simone Biles won gold (no better time to watch Simone Biles Rising on Netflix!).
It's been a lot. It’s been so much, in fact, that as I started and stopped while trying to write the newsletter this week, I realized that I couldn’t pick just one story. So we’re changing up the format a little bit this week, and we’re going to give y’all bite size versions of some of the most incredible stories from the past week. How’s that sound? If it works well, maybe we’ll repeat it for next week too. So without further ado…
From NPR to 3-on-3 Hoops
The first thing you think of when you hear “Olympic basketball” is The Dream Team—NBA stars setting aside their professional rivalries for a shot to win gold for their country. But the marquee team aren’t the only hoopers that represent Team USA. Since Tokyo in 2021, 3-on-3 basketball has been the other Olympic basketball event. And its team also has to set aside professional duties in order to go for gold.
Team USA’s 3-on-3 team features former NBA journeyman and BYU star Jimmer Fredette and Canyon Barry, son of NBA hall of famer Rick Barry and like his father, a proponent of the underhand free throw (!!). Then there is Kareem Maddox. Before Maddox repped the red, white, and blue he worked for NPR. He’s bringing a whole new meaning to “player podcasts.”
Maddox played ball at Princeton, and after graduation, he played professionally in Europe for a few years before retiring. Back home in Southern California wondering what to do next, he was listening to KCRW, the local NPR station, when his brother told him that the station took volunteers. So, Maddox started working at the station four times a week.
Eventually, they hired him full-time as a producer. He also worked at KUNC in Greenley, CO, and at Gimlet, the podcast studio acquired by Spotify in 2019. He even hosted a show exploring what it means to be an Olympian. During all of this, at one point, Maddox was researching a piece on Steph Curry. “It just like occurred to me that shooting the ball is such a craft,” he said. “Steph Curry turns it into a fine art, and it was really beautiful to watch. And I think the thing I thought was like, ‘I want to keep creating beauty in that way.’”
He picked up a basketball, put in some work in the early mornings before work. He heard that 3-on-3 basketball was a new Olympic sport, so started playing in tournaments starting in 2017—right when he got a new job working on a podcast called The Pitch. “We played our first tournament, and I was like ‘Hey, I kinda gotta go to Korea for the weekend,’” he said. “‘I’ll be gone Thursday and Friday but I’ll be working on the plane.’ And our editor and host were like ‘All right, that’s fine. A deadline’s a deadline, so as long as you hit it, we really don’t care.’”
Now, finally, he’s made it to the Olympics. He has no podcast plans to document the games—at least not yet. But we’ll be listening.
Maddox and Team USA play France at 12:35 ET today. You can watch on NBC or Peacock.
Not Everyone’s American Dream
You would think that any parent would be thrilled if their child made it to the Olympics. But it may not be so simple for Lily Zhang, who at 28 is playing in her fourth Olympics and may be the greatest American tennis table player of all time. Oh yes, we’re talking ping pong!
The problem is, Zhang’s parents aren’t big fans of the whole Olympics thing. “We always try to convince her to stop playing,” her mother, Linda Liu, told The Wall Street Journal this week. “We just want her to have a normal job.”
Zhang qualified for her first Olympics in 2012, when she was only 16-years-old. But she lost in the first round. For Mom and Dad, things couldn’t have gone better in London. “They’re like, ‘OK, you got to the Olympics. You got that on your college apps, and now you can focus on your studies,’” Zhang said.
But Zhang kept playing the sport that she learned from her parents, both Chinese immigrants, who set up a ping pong table at the center of their cramped Bay Area apartment that doubled as their dining table. “We would just put a tablecloth over it and then eat,” Zhang remembers.
After London, Zhang mostly quit the sport—per her parent’s instructions. But after a year at Cal-Berkeley studying psychology, Zhang wanted to train for the Rio Games and put college on pause. You can imagine the reaction. But, Zhang said, “I play because it does make me happy, because it is one of the greatest passions in my life,” she says. “I didn’t want to look back 30, 40 years from now and regret not taking that chance.”
After college, she didn’t get a real job. She traveled the world playing tournaments and again made Team USA for the Tokyo Olympics. Now she’s in Paris, where she made it to the Round of 16. In the crowd watching was her mother. Has a fourth trip to the Olympics changed anything? “Being a ping-pong athlete,” her mother told a reporter, “is not stable.”
‘Say Cheese’: Italy’s Parmesan-Powered Gymnast
I’m just going to say it: I’m really jealous of Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa.
No, not because she just won a silver medal in the Team All Around, though I guess a silver medal is pretty cool. I’m jealous because Villa has the coolest sponsorship deal of all time. She somehow secured a sponsorship with Parmigiano Reggiano, the consortium of parmesan cheese makers in Italy. As part of her sponsorship duties, Villa posed for what has to be the greatest photoshoot of all time. Behold!
The World’s Youngest Country—and Most Lovable Team
When former NBA All-Star Luol Deng was born in Wau, there was no country called South Sudan. When the country earned its independence, finally, in 2011, Deng was a world away, making an All-Star appearance while with the Chicago Bulls. But after Deng retired in 2019, he focused on a new goal. He became the president of South Sudan’s basketball federation. He wanted, eventually, to see his country make it to the Olympics; as a player, Deng had to represent England, the country that granted his family asylum, in the 2012 games. He said that he always saw South Sudan associated with bad news: famine, poverty, war. Deng wanted to put his home in the news for the right reasons.
Dneg got to work recruiting players with roots in South Sudan who had been displaced after years of Civil War. “Before I took over the president of the federation,” he said, “I did imagine, ‘What if those guys committed to play for our nation?’” For several years, Deng funded the team out of his own pocket.
He made his pitch to perspective players, and soon, South Sudan had a team. In 2023, it qualified for the FIBA World Cup—and finished better than any other African team. That gave South Sudan an automatic qualifier for the Olympics. In their first game at the Olympics this year, South Sudan beat Puerto Rico 90-79. “When the national anthem was sung, it just gave me goosebumps,” Deng said. “I realized that this was bigger than basketball.”
“Did I win…?”
Here’s another one that—as someone with bad vision—makes me realize that I too could be an Olympian (totally…right?). Earlier this week, the Australian Kaylee McKeown won gold in the 100-meter backstroke. The only problem? McKeown didn’t know if she had won. McKeown wears glasses (she’s very near-sighted), and she’s found that prescription goggles don’t work well enough to be worth the hassle. So when she finished her race, most anybody watching looked to her lane expecting to see celebration. Instead, they saw McKeown squinting and straining and trying…but not able to read the screen with the winners.
“I mean, without my glasses I can’t see too much,” McKeown said afterwards. “Is that first? Second? Third? Fourth? Fifth? Sixth? You never actually know.”
When McKeown climbed onto the podium later, she was wearing a pair of glasses. You can bet that she could see the Australian flag being raised as clear as day.
Finishing with a BANG
The last thing you want to feel—in any sport—is a pain in your neck. In 2011, Adriana Ruano, all of 16-years-old, was training to earn a spot in the 2011 world championships in gymnastics, a tournament that was a qualifier for the 2012 London Olympics. But the pain wouldn’t go away. Ruano saw a doctor, who found six damaged vertebrae. The doctor told Ruano that her career was over.
“When I had my injury, I didn’t have anything,” Ruano said. “I started to get desperate, and I was frustrated.” By 2016, she had another idea. “I said to myself, ‘If I can’t be there as an athlete, maybe I can be there as a volunteer’, so I applied,” she said. “They put me on shooting, and I was able to watch my teammates. I could see the competition, and that was the moment that inspired me to think, ‘OK, maybe if not in gymnastics, I can do it in shooting.’”
Ruano started practicing shooting Trap, similar to skeet. Representing Guatamala, she qualified for the 2020 Olympics—and finished dead last. This year, she came back. And this week, Ruano won gold while setting an Olympic record. It’s the first gold medal in Guatamala’s history. And it only happened because Ruano never gave up.
🎾 You also may have noticed another familiar character in Paris this week. Serena Williams—who won four gold medals in her time and was an avid pin collector—was one of the torchbearers during the Opening Ceremonies. Episode 4 of our series In the Arena: Serena Williams is now streaming on ESPN+. This is one of my favorites. In it, we learn how Serena came from being minutes away from dying after developing a blood clot in her lungs to climbing back to the top of the sport. Along the way, we meet “Team Serena,” the group of trainers and hitting partners who helped put Serena back together again. You think of tennis as a team sport—but there’s a whole community that gets your favorite players ready to play each week. Don’t miss this one—streaming now!
🧩 May we suggest a new sport for the Olympics? In the New York Times, Derrick Bryson Taylor reports on the competitive world of…speed puzzling!
⚽ Here’s a story you have to read to believe. Sabastián Marset trafficked drugs and used pro soccer clubs as a way to launder his money. But then he thought to himself, “Why not play on one of these teams while I’m at it?
🏈 August is here, which, in certain parts of the world, means it’s time for two-a-days to begin, signaling the start of the high school football season. For Texas Highways, Ian Dille traveled to Odessa, TX, to check in on the football-crazed town 20 years after Friday Night Lights premiered as a movie. Only this time, Dille doesn’t focus only on Permian. He turns his gaze to Odessa High, the other team in town. This one’s worth your time.
Just a great piece. Well done again.